BEIJING — Profit growth at China's State-owned enterprises (SOEs) stayed at an elevated level as the country's economic recovery continued to firm up, official data showed on June 23.

The combined profits of SOEs surged 170 percent year-on-year to 1.79 trillion yuan (about $277 billion) in the first five months of 2021, according to the Ministry of Finance.

Average profit growth for the same period of 2019 and 2020 came in at 13.5 percent.

During the January-May period, the profits of centrally administered SOEs rose 130 percent year-on-year to 1.25 trillion yuan.

The SOEs saw their total revenue rise 30.5 percent year-on-year to about 28.22 trillion yuan.

The revenue of centrally administered SOEs increased 27.4 percent year-on-year to nearly 16 trillion yuan.

At the end of May, the debt-to-asset ratio of the country's SOEs came in at 64.3 percent, edging down 0.2 percentage points from the same period last year, the data showed.